The first pink streak struck the camera housing just above the front porch.
From the top of her red aluminum ladder, Evelyn Rusk leaned toward the eave and pressed the nozzle again. Paint scattered across the white siding in a wet fan. She had chosen the color deliberately. It was impossible to mistake for dirt, a shadow, or a malfunction. By the time anyone noticed, the camera would be useless for the evening.
The front door opened beneath her.
Mara Bellamy stepped onto the porch carrying a travel mug and stopped so abruptly that coffee splashed across her wrist. She was thirty-two, still wearing the blue work shirt of the neighborhood fabrication studio where she’d spent the previous night repairing a display. For a moment she only stared.
“What are you doing?”
Evelyn kept the can in her hand. “It’s none of your business.”
“You’re spraying my security camera.”
“I can see where I’m spraying.”
“Then please explain why.”
Evelyn looked down without moving a foot off the ladder. Her pale hair had escaped its clip; pink dots decorated her gardening gloves. She was sixty-eight and had lived three doors away since before Mara was born. She had taught dozens of children to ride bicycles and had once rescued a runaway grocery cart before it rolled into traffic. Now she looked ready to argue with the entire street.
“Take that thing down,” Evelyn said.
“The ladder?”
“The camera.”
“Not until you tell me why you’re destroying it.”
Evelyn’s jaw hardened. “Some people put eyes everywhere and think that makes them the owner of whatever those eyes can see.”
Mara glanced at the driveway. Her father’s battered tool case sat behind the hedge where she’d left it the night before. She remembered the small object she’d found while looking for a hex key. Reaching into her pocket, she drew out a ring of keys with a bright blue plastic fob.
Evelyn stopped breathing for a beat.
The can tilted in her hand. Pink paint dripped from the nozzle onto the step below.
“Where did you get that?” Evelyn asked.
“In a box I was given yesterday.”
“Who gave you the box?”
“My dad. He thought it belonged to the old theater.”
Evelyn descended two rungs too quickly. Mara grabbed the ladder to steady it.
“Don’t touch me,” Evelyn snapped, although Mara hadn’t.
“Fine. But don’t fall on my porch.”
Evelyn climbed down more carefully. Up close, her expression was no longer defiant. It was frightened, but also searching, as if a familiar tune had begun playing in the wrong room.
“Blue fob,” she murmured. “With the bite out of the corner.”
Mara turned it in her palm. A crescent-shaped notch marked the plastic. “You recognize it.”
